The problem with “malware” (viruses, trojans, spyware, adware etc) scanners is that not single program detects everything. Check my previous post about online multi-av scanners. Online scanning only works on one file at a time though, so some software to scan an entire PC is needed.

What is needed are “on-demand only” AV programs.

Most anti-virus software insists on running full realtime protection, and being the only AV program on the system. However, some can be installed at the same time as other AV software, and used just for scans (on-demand) rather than full realtime protection. Realtime protection tends to slow a system down a lot too.

I am going to start a page with lists of on-demand only anti-malware software, but to make a start I will list some here. To qualify, the software must run a scan on demand, with no background processes, services or system hooks (beyond kernel mode drivers necessary for some malware removal). Ideally the software should be installable that way but I will allow software (such as AntiVir) which can be cleaned up post install.

Apparently the MacBook Air battery is much easier to replace than the iPod or iPhone batteries. Surely a good thing, right? Well, it might be if they officially supported it by, I don’t know, off the top of my head, installing an eject button like every other laptop in the world, ever. What makes it interesting is that Apple apparently asked Gismodo, the source of the story, to remove an instructional video showing the replacement procedure.

The only conclusion seems to be that Apple does not want you to replace the battery yourself. They want you to pay to have them install a new one. They want you to lube up, and take it like a bitch. This is what I cannot understand about Apple zealots – Apple routinely gives them an electronic high voltage enema yet they lap up every opportunity to expose their back passages to more abuse.

The Air isn’t even that great. Compared to the Toshiba Portégé R500,it’s expensive and under powered. And yes, you can run MacOS on the Toshiba.

Checking my inbox this morning I noticed a red, high priority email from Sarah McCarthy-Fry, my MP, with the subject “JANUARY E-NEWSLETTER FROM SARAH MCCARTHY-FRY MP”. Opening the email, I find it doesn’t even have any text, just one massive image… And I didn’t even ask for it!

Pretty much all the trappings of SPAM, then.

I understand that email is a new technology (only 46 years old), but this email had a distinctly 1998 feel to it. I’m surprised it wasn’t tagged as spam by either SpamAssassin or gmail, considering it’s similarity to the old “HOT TEEN BITCHES” and penis enlargement pill spams of yesteryear. Having an all caps subject and no text in the body is usually a trigger for anti-spam filters.

Now, some advice for any other MPs planning to spam their constituents. We already get spammed by you through the post, so if you are going to email us as well you had better try and get it right. Firstly, your email is not “high priority” or “urgent”, and enabling the “read reply” feature is not only an attempt to invade privacy but also doesn’t work much of the time. Secondly, using ALL CAPS is the internet equivalent of shouting, so don’t do it. Thirdly, using a big image instead of actual text is a very bad idea, because it makes it impossible for people to reply to, forward or search your message properly, and besides which many people can’t see images in email because of the potential security risks. It’s also a favourite trick of spammers, and likely to get your email filtered out as such.

Finally, and here is the most important rule, unless I asked to receive your email, it is SPAM and you must not send it to me. Just writing to you in a futile attempt to affect change in the world and mentioning my email address as a digital signature does not give you the right to spam it.

PS. Check out Ms. McCarthy-Fry’s record on theyworkforyou.com. Overseas trips to Pakistan and the Falklands, total mastery verbal diarrhoea and some exemplary party political arse kissing in parliament.

My brother wants to buy an Apple Mac. They are damn expensive. The spec is laughable. Worst of all, you can’t upgrade the damn things.

The main consumer machine seems to be the iMac. Like most consumer oriented PCs, it comes “complete” with monitor, keyboard, mouse and everything you need to plug it in and make it work. The only upgrade options available are more RAM (using laptop SODIMMs for some stupid reason) and HDD. No CPU upgrades, no graphics upgrade, not even any PCI slots. If you need a faster one, buy a new one.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the spec was okay, but for the money it’s a joke. Not even a half way descent graphics card so you can load up Windows and play a few games – just a Radeon HD2400 with 128MB RAM on the basic model.

The Mac Mini is just as bad. I suppose at least it’s the cheapest way to legitimately run MacOS, although price/performance it’s terrible compared to a Hackintosh.

This seems to be Apple’s modus operandi. Everything is an appliance, when you want a better one you just throw it away and buy the latest model.

Apart from being criminally wasteful, it makes buying Apple products a very unattractive proposition. They are expensive to begin with, and within weeks can be obsolete with no upgrade path. Take Mac Pro for example. The top of the line system, cheapest model £1700, and if you bought one in December come January and the availability of Geforce 8800 cards and they are not supported by your “old” system.

My iPod is in the same boat. It’s a 3rd gen model, and they never bothered to back-port gapless playback. Luckily Rockbox is now working okay on 3rd gen iPods, but it still sucks that Apple won’t support it.

They were a lot bigger than I was expecting, and look really nice. There is some slight unevenness in the brightness which might be down to the psu I was using, and the fact that they are usually designed to be used with a filter.

The interface is parallel and pin compatible with Itron displays. The command codes are different though, so I had to adapt my software. The display has two graphic layers, one of which can be configured as a text layer. The interface is faster than the iTron one, not requiring any delays in I/O. The RAM layout is a bit odd though, horizontally incremented addresses for text and vertically incremented addresses for the graphics. The plan is to interface them to USB using an Atmel AVR. At the moment I am using the parallel port but it eats a lot of CPU time (not to mention the bulky connector and the fact that parallel ports are fast going out of fashion).

It’s probably been blogged a lot by now but I just wanted to mention VirusTotal and jotti.org. They both offer online virus scanning of single files (or archives) of up to 10 megs. The difference between them and other online scans is that they run just about every virus scanner and malware scanner going on the files, and report back results from all of them.

Sometimes you get a few false positives, but they also pick up a lot of stuff that whatever AV software you run may miss. Unfortunately no one AV program detects all viruses, and this is a free way of running just about every tool going on a suspicious file. There is even a handy program you can download from the VirusTotal web site which adds Send To->VirusTotal to the right-click menu in explorer. You can submit files by email as well.

Why is it all online backup services demand you use crap proprietary software or a naff web interface? I have recently been looking around for a free online backup system to safeguard a few hundred megs of data. Just in case my house burns down and takes all my other backups with it. Unfortunately, they all suck.

I searched through just about every free service going, including the usual suspects like Box.net, MediaMax, xdrive.com, humyo, Mozy etc. All require either their own software, which invariably is bloated crap with too few controls, or a web interface. Web interfaces just aren’t good for uploading masses of data, and while I don’t mind a free backup program thrown in it needs to be small, configurable and run when I tell it rather than when it feels like it.

The most promising seemed to be iDrive, because it had the least crappy looking software. It was not to be though – it turns out you can only install the “classic” software along side the new bloatware offering. It’s a bit like you being given a diet coke, only to have raw lard rammed down your anticipating throat the moment you try and take a sip. I emailed tech support and they said “too bad”, so that was that.

Actually, at the moment, gmail looks like the best option. It has a few limits, like maximum 20meg attachment file size, but it goes give you six gig free and you can have as many accounts as you like. Emailing backups sucks because base64/MIME encoding of attachments in email adds 30% to the amount of data you have to send, but gmail has a web interface that allows HTTP uploads too. Email is fine for small files anyway. Use 7-zip with encryption of course. The only problem is a lack of software for Windows. I found some useful scripts for Directory Opus to upload single files, but the only proper backup program I found (FileBunker) hasn’t been updated for years, only seems to use 3DES instead of AES or TwoFish and craps out with a cryptic error when I try to run a backup.

The only remotely promising site I found was EweDrive, but currently registrations are closed :(

Well, to be fair, Scotland seems to be doing a bit better than England & Wales (no wonder they want independence). The shear number of CCTV cameras in the UK is staggering, and yet it’s not the safest place to live by a long shot.

The most worrying this is that most people actually seem to welcome the erosion of privacy. A lot seem to buy into the terrorist threat nonsense (hint: you are more likely to kill yourself or die in an accident than die from terrorism, and what’s the point of being safe if you are not also free?) or are just Daily Mail reading morons who want to “clamp down” on everyone else. Exactly how it works in 1984.

The default TCP/IP settings in Windows are not very good for gigabit networking, and seem to limit you to around 20MB/sec when transferring files. Even with pure TCP tests I couldn’t get over about 30MB/sec with the default.

The solution is to increase the TCP Receive Window and enable Window Scaling. You can edit the registry or just use the hand DrTCP tool:

With those settings I can saturate my gigabit link with jumbo frames enabled, and file transfer via Windows File Sharing (SMB) now seems to be limited by HDD speed rather than the network.